Cancellieri said "the whole government will not fail to
ensure the most adequate level of protection" against the likes
of Riina, who is serving life for his part in the 1992 murders
of anti-Mafia crusading magistrates Giovanni Falcone and Paolo
Borsellino.
The chief prosecutor at the supreme Court of Cassation,
Gianfranco Ciani, added that the authorities would respond to
threats "unanimously and with the utmost firmness".

Cancellieri and Ciani were speaking at a ceremony marking
the start of Italy's judicial year.

Di Matteo reponded for the first time Thursday to Riina's
threats, recorded with a listening device placed in his cell.

The comments were not veiled threats but explicit orders to
kill, he said.

Riina still had a big say in running Cosa Nostra even though
he has been in jail since 1993, Di Matteo said.

"I don't think they can be called mere threats, they are
homicidal intentions outlined to a fellow inmate probably
because they would be taken outside in order to be carried out,"
Di Matteo told Italian radio.

"Still today Riina can certainly try to exercise a command
role (in Cosa Nostra), He said.
On January 20 prosecutors entered into trial evidence
wiretaps of prison conversations between Riina, 83, and another
jailed mobster, in which 'The Beast' gloats over past murders
and plots future ones.

The conversations held in November last year between Riina
and boss Alberto Lorusso from the Puglia-based Sacra Corona
Unita mafia were entered into evidence for an ongoing Palermo
trial into alleged secret negotiations between the Italian State
and the Mafia two decades ago.

Riina is in maximum security prison in Milan for crimes
including ordering the Falcone and Borsellino slayings and is
watching the trial on video.

The shocking Falcone and Borsellino murders were among the
crimes that allegedly induced the State to enter into secret
talks with Cosa Nostra in a bid to stop attacks after a long
campaign of violence that included blowing judges and
prosecutors up with carbombs.

"We must take measures for you people. Ones that will make
you dance the samba", Riina said of the trial judges in a
wiretapped November 16 chat with Lorusso.

"Let's organize this thing. Let's make it real big", he
adds about deputy prosecutor Di Matteo, threatening to kill him
"like a tuna fish".

"Because Di Matteo is not leaving. They just gave him more
bodyguards. So if possible, an execution like back in the day in
Palermo....this prosecutor and this trial are driving me
crazy".

Riina goes on to gloat over the July 29, 1983, carbombing
murder of prosecuting magistrate Rocco Chinnici, who put
together an elite anti-Mafia investigative team, laying the
groundwork for the 'Maxi Trial' against the Sicilian Mafia in
1986, and who frequently spoke out against the Mafia in schools
and public appearances at a time when officials including some
judges had avoided the word for many years.

Riina watched the explosion from afar, and saw the
magistrate's body fly into the air and fall to the ground.

"I had fun thinking about that for a couple of years at
least. I messed him up good", Riina said.

He also indulged in slinging vitriol at new Cosa Nostra
leader Matteo Messina Denaro, also known as Diabolik, who is
known to launder his ill-gotten gains - billions of which have
been seized by police in recent years - through solar and wind
energy investments.

"I hate to say this, but this Signore Messina Denaro, this
fugitive who acts like he's the boss, doesn't give a toss about
us. He dabbles in streetlights, but he'd look a whole lot better
if he shone a light up his a**".

In other remarks made public Wednesday, Riina recalled that
he had prepared a special "welcome" for Carabinieri General
Carlo Alberto Dalla Chiesa, slain with his wife in September
1982, five months after being sent to Palermo to fight the
Mafia.

Riina also said late Christian Democrat (DC) statesman
Giulio Andreotti, who judges concluded helped the Mafia until
1980, was the "best" politician Italy ever had.

A month before being appointed Palermo prefect, Dalla
Chiesa went public with prosecutors' long-held contentions that
the Sicily section of Andreotti's DC faction was "the most
infiltrated by the Mafia".

Andreotti's Sicily 'proconsul' Salvo Lima's assassination
in early 1992 is believed to have marked the end of a truce,
sparked by Riina's irate reaction to the confirmation of heavy
Maxi-trial convictions.

Prosecutors said the Mob had been hoping Andreotti's man on
the supreme court, 'sentence-killer' Corrado Carnevale, would
get the sentences overturned as he had in the past.